Posts Published in October 2012

Want to see what New York City experienced over the past few days? Check out this time-lapse video by Silas Maniatis (SMvideoChan on YouTube). The photographs were captured by a camera mounted to the top of the building at 2 Northside Piers in Brooklyn and snapping away at 2 frames every minute, or 30 seconds between shots.Read more…

As for you Instagramers, twenty years from now you’ll be sorry. You’ll be more sorry than I am when I look back on a picture I made twenty years ago with a 20mm lens when I should have used a 28mm. Years from now, you’ll awake in the middle of the night and suddenly realize putting a fake border on a picture makes the whole picture fake. You’ll understand that the technical choices you made destroyed the longterm credibility of both you and your images.

Instead of having a body of work to look back on, you’ll have a sad little collection of noisy digital files that were disposable when you made them, instantly forgotten by your followers (after they gave you a thumbs up), and now totally worthless. You’ll wish you’d have made those images on a Pentax K1000 and Tri-X (at the very least or most depending on your age and perspective), but the times you failed to record properly will be long gone. But don’t listen to me, listen to all your Insta-friends. They love you.

We’re happy to announce that Photoshop CS6, Lightroom 4 and Elements 11 are compatible with Microsoft Windows 8. The only issue customers might see is with document window transparency/flickering in Photoshop CS6 caused by video drivers. The drivers that ship with Windows 8 may not be the most recent available from the card vendors […]

I recommend that customers make sure they have the lastest drivers from either AMD or nVidia. If you still have problems with the latest drivers, try setting the Advanced Settings for OpenGL Drawing/Graphic Card Processing in the Photoshop’s Preferences>Performance… dialog so that Drawing Mode is set to “Basic.”

Microsoft has already ensured that Windows 8 is fully backwards-compatible with Windows 7 software. Adobe is just confirming that photographers can upgrade with peace of mind knowing that their existing workflow can still be used on the other side.

After Hurricane Sandy devastated New York City earlier this week, photographer Randy Scott Slavin ventured around various areas that had been plunged into darkness due to power outages. He shot eerie long-exposure photographs that make the city look like a ghost town. The series is titled “NYC Unplugged.”Read more…

As a kid growing up in interior British Columbia, it is impossible not to fall in love with the great outdoors. Some of the best ski hills on the continent, endless hiking and biking opportunities, and lakes that stretch over the horizon. The endless opportunities outside my doorstep would often lead to long adventures in the mountains, and ultimately, a budding interest in photographing these places to share with others.

Using an old Pentax ME-50 Super, I captured images of mountains, glaciers, and sunsets on these outings. It was pretty hard to take a bad picture when the surroundings are so epic and naturally stunning, it was just a matter of visiting them.Read more…

It seems like Kodak is having a hard time figuring out how to getting its finances back in the black. Kodak has announced its 3rd quarter financial results, and the numbers aren’t pretty — they’re downright ugly, actually. Despite raking in $1 billion over the three-month period ending in September (down 19% from the same period last year), the company still posted a net loss of $312 million (up from a loss of $222M during the same period last year).Read more…

It’s mind-blowing what can be created these days using ordinary DSLRs, a small team of people, and a whole lotta skill with visual effects. The short film above, titled “Grounded“, was emailed in to us by its creator Kevin Margo, who works as the visual effects supervisor at Blur Studios. He says that it was inspired by his father, who passed away from cancer. Here’s the synopsis:

One astronaut’s journey through space and life ends on a hostile exosolar planet. Grounded is a metaphorical account of the experience, inviting unique interpretation and reflection by the viewer. Themes of aging, inheritance, paternal approval, cyclic trajectories, and behaviors passed on through generations are explored against an ethereal backdrop.

It was shot using a Canon 5D Mark II for 24fps footage, a Canon 7D for 60fps footage, and the Canon 24mm, 50mm, and 135mm prime lenses. The software used in post include Vegas, PFtrack, Zbrush/Vray/Max, Fusion, and AE/MagicBullet.Read more…

When Google upgraded its Android OS to Jelly Bean 4.2 a couple of days ago, the company unveiled a new camera app called Photo Sphere that lets you shoot 360-degree panoramas by waving your camera around. If you’ve been dying to play with the app on your Android device running the older version of Jelly Bean, but can’t bear to wait until 4.2 officially comes to you, this should be music to your ears: the new 4.2 camera/gallery upgrades and Photo Sphere have been successfully ported to Android 4.1.1.Read more…